Rescuers find debris pit staggering

NEW YORK - As they emerge, dusty and grim-faced, from the wreckage of the World Trade Center, rescue workers keep saying the same thing: You can't fully understand it unless you've been there.

They mean the pit, the massive mountain of debris left from Tuesday's catastrophic attack on New York's tallest buildings. Long-distance television shots don't convey its bewildering size and strangeness. At night, when the pit glows under powerful lights, it is a malevolent presence reigning over an unreal landscape.

New York police Officer Mike Goldreyer stands, awe-struck, during a break early Saturday. Crews work for hours, he says, but the debris pile looks the same.

All night, generators drone loudly. Beams of light glint off the six-packs of bottled water stacked by the hundred on the pavement nearby. Streams from fire hoses arc high in the air. White smoke and steam billows ceaselessly against night sky.

At its north edge, the pit rises from three stories high to more than six. Rescue workers say that when they get on top, it's like entering an insane, new country - with its own geography of hills and valleys. Hellish and insurmountable.

And there is emotion in every inch of the wreckage. Here are "friends, brothers, mothers," said Officer Peter Shrine. "Everyone who died there is part of our family."

The jagged gray bluff rises above the work cranes. Steel beams add flashes of yellow and russet. Close up, they are crumpled like paper straws, or gently curved like the hull of a boat.

Despite a real danger of shifting, the wreckage viewed from the street seems an inert, solid mass. Bent lengths of steel are tightly entangled. Swiveling cranes must yank hard to extract anything, and have trouble getting a secure grip.

When they approach the pit for the first time, workers say, they need a few moments just to process what they see. Even seasoned crew members frequently spend their breaks just standing and staring.

"It must have sunk right through this island, there is so much rubble," said city sanitation worker Luis Algarin.

Goldreyer - along with his bicycle patrol team from the Bronx - is among those working on this cold but mercifully dry night. He has been on the New York Police Department for just a year and a half. He has never attended a police funeral.

Members of the force are being exposed to death on an unimaginable scale. Officers are retrieving body parts, escorting them through the morgue, talking to bereaved families.

Moment by moment, hour after hour, workers move chunks of concrete and sift through rubble. "You are just moving stuff from here to there," Shrine said. It is a learn-as-you-go assignment. The ironworkers impress everyone with their ability to scramble across high beams, the firefighters with their broad knowledge of power tools.

The pit at night is a punishing environment of smells, noise, blinding lights and dry, acrid air that instantly chaps lips and reddens eyes. There is the smell of death.

The Bronx police officers help remove the remains of six people, handing black body bags in baskets, relay-style, off of the debris pile. One body is identified as a firefighter's. A white helmet nearby is strapped to the bag.

At one point, even a search dog succumbs to exhaustion. Handlers put an oxygen mask over its face while carrying the dog out.